Principled brands that die: Phi
Attitude, growth, solutions, strategy, design, charisma, trend leadership and responsiveness. Brands that live and brands that die. There's a curious challenge in the realm of celebrity brand development. Some evolve happily, growing, selling up, selling out and...
The Signature of a Brand | Human Handwriting and Character
Examining the idea of brand, signature and personality I was thinking about the idea of hand-writing and the character of the person. By a typical extrapolation, I'd liken the brand to the human -- in the warmed sense that brand is more than merely the skin of...
Modernist Type Design | Signing, Messaging and Way Finding
The right type -- communicating simple, elegant pathways in environmental graphic design. I was standing in the subway, NY Transit Authority (MTA) -- the proverbial NYC subway system and thinking about the complexity of the way-finding system there. Frankly, it...
The sense of the book: iPad / eBook interface
The sentience of reading experience: Kindle vs. iPad, an exploration of dimensionality. This from GadgetLab: "But some die-hard e-reader fans like Len Edgerly, who hosts the weekly Kindle Chronicles podcast, say pretty e-books aren’t as big a draw as some would think....
Human Brands | Anna Wintour and Vogue
A series on Human Brand | defining the inextricable link between people, founding vision and the brands that they produce. I've swung in and out of Vogue, with minimal amounts of work to do -- precisely from a professional standpoint -- with the magazine for decades....
Steven P. Jobs, the iPad Apple Tablet, and the Drawn Story
Firescript: the hand, the drawing, the gesture and a legacy. I've got history on the concept of the tablet. Friends of mine, running hardware design at Microsoft - I told them - what about the idea of showing the art of what this hardware could be? What can, what...
Rethinking Construction Barriers | Place-making and brand story in environmental skins at street level
Art on streetscape | holding construction and the impending quietude in the wait for financing Still, most people are waiting for financing; that is, the banks, while mostly funded back in government bailouts, repaid in context, other major projects are sitting and...
The World of Tomorrow: Brand Design and Motion Picture Identity
Sky Captain, Hugh Ferriss, Raymond Loewy, Norman Bel Geddes and the implications of design in entertainment Over time, I've had the chance to link with, and work for, extraordinary talent. It's a blessing. And it's a gift of the work -- as a designer, working as a...
Buzz pop: 5-Hour Energy Drink
How branding, intuition and distribution built a $300 million product at POP. Hanging out with increasingly younger people, I'm finding exposure to drinks that, well, I wouldn't have thought I'd consider drinking in the past. But I have been, not so much for the idea...
The handwritten
Notes on notes. Opening a note, the other day, from someone. It was something -- an object -- that was a carrying of the touch of that person. A notation, a missive, an expression. It's interesting, the idea of handwritten, the touch, the inner workings of that...